


Radio Silence

by thirty2flavors



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 02:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3274184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fishing for a distraction, she says, “If I’d known you were going to be such a chatterbox, I’d have brought earplugs.” // Mid-2x04. The ride back from Sandbrook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radio Silence

Hardy climbs into the car without a word.

 

“How was dinner?” she asks. But there’s no reply, not even the _just drive, Miller_ she’d been anticipating, and Ellie rolls her eyes.

 

While he’d gone off to reunite with the family, Ellie sat in a cafe, nursing a cup of tea, a sandwich and more biscotti than she cares to think about. She is, if she’s honest, more curious about his family than might be justifiable. Meeting his wife, however briefly, had only raised more questions – she’s nothing like him. It’s hard to imagine Alec Hardy stringing together enough nice words to make a marriage proposal, and Ellie wonders if he’d grunted his way through his vows.

 

“All right, then, never mind.” She listens for the click of his seat belt before she shifts the car into gear. “Honestly, it’s like I’m travelling with a stroppy teenager.”

 

She says it for her own benefit more than his; he’ll ignore it, the same reliable way he ignores all her insults and half the rest of what she has to say. Even his expression doesn’t change, and Ellie finds herself thinking about his daughter, picturing a miniature Hardy with a scowl on her face and a fringe flopping down over her eyes. It almost makes her want to laugh. Poor Tess.

 

But then she thinks of Tom, and it’s as if she swallowed a litre of ice water. She’d caught just a glimpse of him when she’d gone to drop Fred off at Lucy’s before he’d stalked to another room, out of sight. It seems like he’s grown an inch every time Ellie sees him, and it scares her to think how much she’s missed these last few months, how much more she’ll miss before he comes around.

 

(He _will_ come around, though. She won’t entertain any other possibility.)

 

Hardy shifts in the seat next to her, turning his head to face out the window, and Ellie wonders if the move is more about looking at the scenery or looking away from her. The perpetual aura of _fuck off_ that surrounds him is stronger than usual tonight, and she thinks again about Tom, growing like a weed, and Hardy’s daughter. He doesn’t talk about her much – doesn’t talk about anything much – but Ellie has known him long enough, been a detective long enough, to piece together the silence. There are questions she wants to ask but never will. Had he even tried for custody, or had he accepted the loss of his own daughter as some sort of cosmic punishment for failing Pippa and Lisa?

 

That’d be daft, she thinks, but then she’s never met anyone more committed to their own misery than Alec Hardy.

 

Whatever it was, she doesn’t envy him. It’s been hard, these last few months, living away from Tom, and she’s done it all with the steely determination that it’s only temporary, that sooner or later he’ll come home again. She’d have gone mad by now without that spec of light on the horizon. Now, the trial has called even that into question. What if Joe gets off? What if Joe gets off, and Tom wants to live with his dad?

 

Gripping the wheel tighter, Ellie gives herself a shake. Now that’s a line of thought she really can’t afford to think about, unless she wants to crash this bloody car.

 

Fishing for a distraction, she says, “If I’d known you were going to be such a chatterbox, I’d have brought earplugs.”

 

“Shame you didn’t,” he grumbles.

 

“Oh, come on,” she groans, “it’s a long drive, you really want to spend it all in awkward silence?”

 

“Who says it has to be awkward?”

 

“Fine,” she snaps, “sit there and brood. But I’m driving all night, I need something to keep me awake.”

 

Tuning the radio to the first station that comes in clearly, she braces herself for complaints that never arrive. Truthfully she’s grown more comfortable with silence herself in the last seven months. These days, more often than not, Ellie Miller regards silence as a comfortable buffer between her and the rest of the world. At any rate, it’s preferable to the tone-deaf nattering of her coworkers in Devon, or the veiled (and not-so-veiled) accusations of the people in Broadchurch.

 

 _God_ , she thinks. _I’m turning into him._

 

Once upon a time, silence had made her itch, and she’d always done her best to fill it in whatever way she could. It was one of the things that had drawn her to Joe, how smoothly conversation had flown between them. Now, in the Greek fucking tragedy that is her life, she spends most of her time with a man who considers “good morning” to be a waste of words, even for colleagues-slash-friends-slash-secret-lovers-slash-personal-chauffeurs.

 

Guilt stirs in her stomach, and she slouches back into her seat. That’s not really fair, is it? For all the brooding and grouchiness, there’s a steadiness to Alec Hardy that Ellie has to admit she’s grateful for. In the midst of an utter shit storm of uncertainty, his reliability is comforting.

 

Besides, he’s about the only non-blood relative who hasn’t spent the better part of a year treating her like a leper. That’s worth a bit of patience.

 

“It’s Daisy’s birthday next month,” Hardy announces out of nowhere, long after they’ve fallen quiet.

 

Ellie starts. “What? Who’s Daisy?”

 

“My daughter,” he answers, a little too indignantly for someone who can’t seem to remember the name “Fred”.

 

“Oh.” Ellie blinks, unsure how to handle the unprecedented territory of unsolicited personal information. “How old?”

 

“Sixteen.” There’s a twinge of regret in his voice before he sniffs and gestures with his chin towards the radio. “This band, they’re her favourite. I was thinking I could get her a… CD or something.”

 

It’s another second or two of confusion before she realizes it’s his roundabout way of asking for her advice – not on Sandbrook, or Claire, or a case, not consulting former DS Miller, but something personal, something for Ellie, mother of two. For some daft reason, that squeezes her heart.

 

“Right,” she says. “Only, do people still use CDs? Tom’s got all that stuff on his computer. Or he did have, anyway.” _Before he smashed it with a rock._ “Have they maybe got a tour or something coming up? You could get her tickets.”

 

Hardy makes a vague noise of agreement and Ellie wonders if he’s already regretting having broached the subject. “Right.” He nods without looking in her direction. “Yeah.”

 

Daisy’s favourite band fills the hole left by the conversation, lamenting some lost first love. The lyrics are simple, the melody generic, and Ellie’s sure the voices belong to one of the many sets of boys with silly hair she sees plastered across magazine covers in WHSmith, but the ever-present ache in her chest is exacerbated with every verse. Sixteen, she thinks.

 

Tom’s birthday is a few months away. She wonders if it’ll be the first one she doesn’t spend with him.

 

Giving herself a shake, she sits up straighter in her seat. “Next month, you said, yeah? You should go. I’ll take you.”

 

“What?” He finally looks at her for that, alarmed and surprised. “That’s not—”

 

“Oh, come on, you’re not getting shy about accepting favours _now_?”

 

Hardy gapes at her like a scruffy fish, shaking his head. “That’s—I wasn’t trying to—”

 

“Yeah,” she carries on, “I’ll drive. You can pay for petrol.”

 

“You don’t have to do that,” he insists. He sounds panicked enough that Ellie almost laughs at him: perfectly happy to bark orders and make demands, totally bewildered by anyone offering help of their own volition.

 

“Tough, I want to,” she decides. “I’ll bring Fred. We’ll, I dunno, sightsee. Just get a room with two bloody beds this time.”

 

It’s dark in the car, and Hardy’s face is half covered under that damn beard anyway, but Ellie is fairly certain he’s gone a shade redder.

 

Somehow the thought delights her.

 

“Miller—”

 

“Will you stop being difficult for ten seconds? Just say yes.”

 

It takes a second, but then—

 

“Yes.” He nods, back to keenly avoiding her eyes. “All right. Yes.”

 

“Good.”

 

Hardy lapses into silence beside her, and Ellie settles back in her seat, feeling pleasantly smug about... well, she’s not entirely sure what. At any rate, at least there’s something to mark in her diary that isn’t related to a child murder case. She’s preparing herself to go the rest of the trip without talking, when—

 

“Miller,” he says abruptly, sniffing and staring determinedly out the windshield. “You know. Thank you.”

 

It’s the curt, awkward thanks of someone embarrassed to be in a situation that requires thanks at all. Ellie finds it strangely endearing; she’s learning quickly that Alec Hardy is not nearly as good at being alone as he fancies himself to be.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, smirking to herself. “Don’t go getting all sappy on me, now.”


End file.
